Moondust
by TB's LMC
Summary: Danny said he'd always follow Grace, right? The only thing about the Moon, though, worse than even the damn sand in Hawaii, is all that freakin'…moondust. There may be bromance, but there will be no slash.
1. Chapter 1: Moon Five 0

_Summary: Danny said he'd always follow Grace, right? The only thing about the Moon, though, worse than even the damn sand in Hawaii, is all that freakin'…_

* * *

**MOONDUST**

* * *

_So they sprinkled moondust in your hair of gold  
And starlight in your eyes of blue…  
~The Carpenters, "Close To You"_

Danny sighed as he ran a hand through his damp hair, nicely tousled from having just been toweled dry. He looked out of the small porthole in the wall of his tin can of a room and sighed at the sheer boring-ness of the landscape beyond.

Where he'd gotten used to lush greens and blood-reds, velvet purples and vibrant oranges and yellows of Hawaiian flora…where once he'd heard nothing but the annoying cacophony of early-morning sounds courtesy of 'Iwa and 'I'iwi and Whistling Ducks and 'Eki'eki birds…where once he'd look up to find a cloudless sun-filled sky and blink to find a darkened sky that told of an impending downpour? Now, Danny Williams saw nothing but the drab gray-white of Moondust against the inky black nothing of space and dead silence beyond.

This was his life now.

It used to be he said, "I'll follow Grace to the ends of the Earth." But once man had finally decided to start colonizing the Moon, once big business and the military and every government on Earth had started trying to hook their claws into the small, dead rock orbiting their home planet to make as much money as possible, well…Danny had had to make a change to that long-uttered statement.

Nowadays it was simply, "I'll follow Grace wherever she goes."

Because Grace had gone to the Moon. Of course she had. Yes, _this_ was Danny's life now. The Moon.

Stan and all his big-money real estate holdings. He'd had enough power and influence to be able to buy a good chunk of real – er…Moon – on the…er…Moon. And so he'd needed to be up _on_ the Moon to oversee how it was going to be parceled out and sold off. To be there in person to greet potential buyers and show them around.

And Rachel, having apparently fallen back in love with him both after the birth of their son and after Danny had shot him to try and save Grace's life, decided she wasn't "bloody well going to be left alone in Hawaii, Stanley Edwards!" and had announced that she and the children would accompany Stan.

To the Moon.

Turning and tossing his now-damp bath towel onto the twin bed, Danny pressed the button that opened the first drawer in the four-drawer dresser built into the wall of his small room. He pulled out socks, underwear, a white V-neck tee shirt. While the Five-0 Moonbase was fairly nice and very well climate-and-gravity controlled, it was on the cool side just enough that Danny no longer wore his button-down work shirts over his bare skin, but instead had to wear them over a cotton tee shirt which meant he'd had to buy a size larger in the shirt department. A whole new wardrobe, dammit, and all because Grace had been taken to the goddamn fucking _Moon_.

The Edwards family had their own slightly small (read: cottage-like) home on a Moon estate roughly five miles from Five-0's combination living and working quarters. Stan already was paying a fortune for more workmen to come next month to add on to the home and make it much more palatial since Rachel and the kids were pretty well stuck there twenty-four/seven.

Grace attended her school back in Hawaii via satellite and was a hit with all the kids, a star now in her own right not any dimmer than the millions of other stars in space, Danny always assured her. They thought it was "so cool!" that Grace Williams was living on the Moon now, and she reported to them daily about what it was like.

It was boring.

Well, at least, for Danny it was.

Truth be told, it would've been a _hell_ of a lot _more_ boring had not his announcement in the bullpen one unhappy Wednesday morning resulted in – rather than a lot of unhappiness, incredulousness and "No fucking _way_, Danno!"'s – a fairly quick decision by Governor Denning, Lt. Cmdr. Steve McGarrett, Mr. and Mrs. Chin Ho Kelly, Kono Kalakaua, a big guy named Kamekona and a Medical Examiner named Max to…get this…follow _Danny_.

Somehow or other, within forty-eight hours of Danny's rather unbelievable announcement that he was leaving Five-0 _not_ to go back to Jersey, but to go to _space_, McGarrett had convinced everyone from the Governor of Hawaii to the head coroner that Danny's entire _ohana_ should join him up there.

Thus, Moon Five-0 was born.

And oh, boy, did Hawaii get one _hell_ of a boost…which suited Governor Denning, the President of the United States and Hawaiians _just_ fine, thanks much. And all because of the stepfather of the daughter of a guy who liked New Jersey better than Hawaii. Go figure. Hawaii not only now had the Claim to Fame of establishing the one and only police presence on the Moon…which would follow Hawaiian laws no matter who its members might arrest for wrongdoing…it also boasted the one and only Medical Examiner for the entirety of the thing, and _also_ was the first entity to open a fast food joint, appropriately dubbed Kamekona's Out-Of-This-World Cuisine. Which, you know, Shrimp à la Dark Matter in and of itself wasn't all that bad a dish, truth be told.

Danny pulled on his work pants and his nice dark blue button-down shirt, then donned his shoes and hoped like hell today wouldn't be a day Five-0 would have to go outside to investigate something or provide security for something or – God forbid – chase after a bad guy of some sort.

There were plenty of people here on the surface of the Moon, now, with the last count Five-0 had done three weeks earlier marking eighty-nine international souls with eighteen more on various orbiting satellites or space stations. Since that census another eleven had joined the permanent residents with thirty-five workmen arriving a week ago to stay only as long as it took to do their jobs.

So Five-0 kept itself busy helping their home planet run background checks on every single solitary person before they were allowed to step foot (or rocket) anywhere near the Moon. They also patrolled on a twenty-four hour clock, keeping time with Hawaii's, which they forced all the Moon's inhabitants to do. It was kind of like Hawaii Extended which, you know, was weird to Danny but hey, if so far nobody had tried to blow them all up in protest of a United States state having everything their way, so be it.

After all, Hawaii had gotten there first. So why not?

Among the four Five-0 task force members, not much had changed. Steve still wore thigh holsters way more than was strictly necessary given that nobody else lived in or worked in or had access to the Five-0 headquarters/living base that was on the cusp of a nice, two-mile deep crater ("Danny, you can't fall _in_to the crater, not with the way gravity works here!" "Steven, if anyone could fall into to something you shouldn't be able to fall into, it would be you!") except Max, who had an office, a room of his own and an autopsy bay with a small six-drawer freezer for dead bodies.

Max who, God bless his heart, soul and gizzard, was so ridiculously happy to be living out his _Star Trek_ geekdom in Real Life that he was stupidly giddy the majority of the time and thus more difficult to comprehend than he'd ever been in Hawaii.

Kono and Steve kept up seriously scary workout routines together to keep their bodies in shape. Because while their HQ and living area had Earth gravity re-created, the same could not be said of the Moon itself. Nor of the other structures because it was up to each structure's owner whether they wanted the gravity to be altered or not ("No, Max, we are not going for Zero-G in our headquarters.").

Kono still partnered with Chin, whose lovely wife Malia had agreed to accompany him after her hospital had given her a generous grant to study the effects of the decreased gravity on the Moon on various types of cancer cells. She also did some double duty as a triage doctor whenever anyone was injured. In spite of the fact that there was no atmosphere on the Moon, and that the possibility _always _existed of people dying from compromised space suits and/or helmets, however, not a single solitary injury or death had occurred as yet since the colonization had begun. Steve credited it to Five-0's constant monitoring of Moon residents and their equipment.

Danny chalked it up to human self-preservation instincts.

Ah, Steve. And Danny. Still bickering. Still walking their bromantically-charged line. Still them, simply with a change of location. While Danny bemoaned the loss of his beloved Camaro, Steve attempted to make a Moonbuggy equivalent, enlisting Chevrolet's help to start the first line of Moon-specific (and sexy) vehicles to be sold to Moon residents.

Danny called him a goofball, but was inordinately touched.

And when Steve found out that bullets travel a helluva lot faster out of guns on the Moon due to the decreased gravity, he also began working with weapons manufacturers and the Navy to develop new weapons specifically for use on the Moon.

Danny called him a very frightening and disturbed man, but helped him test them out (of course he did).

But there was one thing…one goddamn thing that seemed to get worse and worse as the months on the Moon went by, and that was Steve's taste in music. Oh, he no longer subjected Danny to _Sexy Eyes_ in the transport that took them from HQ to whatever structure, building, home or company they were visiting at any given moment. No. Now he was subjecting Danny to much _much_ worse.

Like…Air Supply.

Can you imagine?

_Air_ Supply!

Danny did a lot of facepalming early on when McGarrett produced a flash drive filled with mp3s on their first transport trip. But he very nearly tore his hair completely out ("I will be bald before I'm forty, Steven!") when Steve added The Carpenters to his repertoire. Because while Danny could get behind some Bruno Mars and tolerate Celine Dion to a point, The Carpenters was just…oh, _God_.

He wasn't quite sure why hearing Karen Carpenter sing grated on his nerves even more than _Sexy Eyes_ ever did, but it gave Steve something to give him shit about, which gave Danny something to gripe back at him about, so all in all Danny called it a win.

So when he strode into their little bullpen filled to the brim with all manner of fancy technology in a small-scale re-creation of the one back in Iolani Palace, he had a fantastic quip all ready to go to start the day off right. It was sure to draw at _least_ Aneurism Face from Steve and getting that first thing in the morning before coffee was a beautiful accomplishment for Detective Danny Williams.

"You know how she sings about moondust in that one song, babe?" Danny asked as the double-doors hissed closed behind him. But then he stopped short. Because Steve wasn't alone. Both Chin and Kono – who should've gone back to their rooms by now since they typically took the twelve hundred to twenty-four hundred hours shift – were gathered around the large computer table, and on the screen that filled the entirety of one of the room's walls was a very obviously dead-from-having-been-exposed-to-the-vacuum-of-space body.

Danny's joke about the moondust song died in his throat as his teammates turned sad eyes his way. "Who is it?" Danny whispered…because it was nearly impossible to tell given the puffiness and distorted features of the face in question.

"We don't know," Chin said. "Max ran the DNA against our entire Moon Resident Database and there's no match."

Danny moved closer to the screen, then looked away. Gray. Distended. Practically featureless. The face and body were _gross_. "Stowaway?" he asked.

"That's what it looks like, and it also looks like he was deliberately shoved out of an airlock without a helmet," Steve replied grimly.

"Our first murder on the Moon," Kono mourned.

"Stand down, guys, you need rest after going at this for over twelve hours. Danno and I will take over from here. Join us at oh-six hundred hours."

Kono and Chin nodded. Normally neither would just leave in the midst of an investigation. But unlike things had been in Honolulu, up here on the Moon there _was_ no backup. They had only themselves, the four of them, and so they needed to be as well-rested as possible at all times, and rarely actually worked together at all anymore.

Danny strolled over to the coffee machine in the tiny kitchenette off one corner of the bullpen. "Where was our vic found?" he threw back over his shoulder as Kono and Chin exited the room.

"Just outside the new Edwards MoonEstate office that's being constructed eight miles from here."

Danny whipped around so fast he nearly spilled his mug of coffee everywhere. "Stan's offices?"

Steve nodded. "So guess who we're going to talk to first?"

Danny sighed. On would go the space suit today, he was sure of it. And he hated those space suits, because no matter _what_ McGarrett said, after bouncing around the surface of the Moon for an hour (which even Danny had to admit was fun), he was convinced they did _not_ keep moondust out of cracks and crevices that even _sand_ feared to go.

"The suits are completely sealed, Danny. You'd be dead if they weren't."

"Then explain how I found this nasty gray stuff—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think I want to know where you found it, do I?"

"No. You probably don't."

"Thank you."

Oh, how he longed for the beaches of Hawaii…


	2. Chapter 2: Close to You

Talking with Stanley Edwards the Third was always a…pleasure.

After all, the whole shot-him-in-the-shoulder thing was behind them.

And the whole, "I'm picking up and moving five thousand miles away from where the Williamses have lived their whole life (all except Rachel, but still)" was, you know, water under the proverbial bridge.

And it's not like Danny was in any way shape or form pissed off that Stan's latest what-the-fuckery was moving off the goddamn planet—

"So how do you like the Moon, Danny?" with a clap on his shoulder and a squeeze and Danny really just wished he could punch the bastar—

"Danno!"

"Monkey!" Diffused, as always, by a now-eleven-year-old Grace. Danny closed his eyes and sighed happily, then inhaled the sweet smell of her shampoo and felt himself relax like he never did any other time. "Hi, baby," he smiled as she gave him an extra tight squeeze.

"Sorry, but we're not here on a social visit," Steve just _had_ to go and say.

"No, because if this _was_ a social visit, _you_ would not be here!" Danny said, jabbing a finger in his partner's direction.

Trust Steve to put on I-Am-Not-Either-Pouting Face. Danny sighed.

"I figured as much," Stan said genially. God, why did he have to be so fucking _nice_, anyway? "Rachel, would you mind?"

"Of course not, Stanley, I believe our son is due for some play time anyway, don't you, sweetie?" she asked Grace with a smile.

Oh, God, Danny was going to puke. That was it. He knew it. And he couldn't even run outside to get away from the Pukey Happy Family on the Moon.

"Yeah, I was going to show him how to build a tower," she nodded, the ever-present braids flopping against her shoulder blades.

Danny sighed as the ladies exited the room. Stan ushered them into the smallish living room area and looked around. Christ, even up here the bastard had to do everything fifty thousand (dollars) times better than anyone else.

"I have no idea who that man was. It was the foreman of my construction crew who found him," Stan began. Steve nodded. Danny plopped down on a ridiculously plush couch.

"How much do you know about your foreman?" Steve asked.

"About as much as you know about any construction crew, I suppose. You guys did the background check on the entire twenty-one person crew before they were even allowed to take off from Cape Canaveral."

"Yes, Jacob Stern," Danny said with a nod. "Not a one of them had a thing wrong or they wouldn't have passed our check."

"That's right," Steve agreed. "But we also know not everything shows up in a background check."

Stan shook his head. "I probably know way less than you do. Jake tells me he didn't recognize the guy."

"And Lieutenant Kelly questioned half the rest of the crew while Officer Kalakaua questioned the other half. They all said the same thing," Steve replied.

"One thing that's curious," Danny said, moving forward so he was perched on the edge of the (ridiculously plush) sofa. He waited until Stan's eyes were on him before continuing. "Why'd he call you first, leaving _you_ to call us?"

Stan made a face like he hadn't even thought of it. "Good point. I don't know. He just said he'd found this guy bouncing around outside the Lunar North Entrance."

"When Chin and Kono arrived on-scene they found him tethered to the railing outside that entrance via a severed O2 line," Steve clarified.

Stan shrugged. "I haven't been over there yet. When Officer Kalakaua called me about it she said the whole place was a crime scene so I wouldn't have been able to get in anyway."

"True enough," Danny said, then looked at Stan thoughtfully. "You've got another crew coming up a month from now to expand this place, right?"

"Yes. Totally different company than the one building my offices."

"Why's that?" Steve asked.

"Well," Stan said with another shrug, "this crew is great for more functional business-like structures, but I want my original house crew back. Nobody knows this place better than Virg and his men."

"It's the same crew coming back," Danny repeated, a tiny frown in place.

Stan nodded. "Yeah, although Virg said five of the men refused to return here, they just don't like working in the lighter gravity, so he's working at replacing them. But Virg's gung-ho to do it."

"I remember the initial background check on those men," Steve said thoughtfully.

"Of course you do," Danny mumbled.

Stan grinned.

"Virgil Gabbana, right? Owner of _Lunar Modules_?"

Stan nodded. "I'm impressed."

"Don't be," Danny said, smirking at his partner. "I was, too, until I finally found out from a visiting SEAL buddy of his three years ago that he's got a photographic memory."

Steve scrunched up his features and made a nasty face at Danny.

"Pfft, he's my daughter's step-father, he won't tell anyone."

Stan chuckled. "No, I won't. I promise."

Steve threw Danny yet another round of stink-eyes and then turned back to Stan. But Danny spoke again before his partner could, rising to his feet as he did so. "Are you aware of any potential connection between our victim and the _Lunar Modules_ crew?"

Frowning, Stan rubbed his chin for a second. "I honestly don't know. I mean, from what Jake said the guy's face wasn't, uh…you know."

"No, it isn't," Danny acquiesced. "Could you call Grace out here? We need to go."

Steve looked up at his partner in surprise, took in his body language and his face immediately cleared as he rose to his feet.

"Sure, be right back," Stan replied, then got up and walked out of the room.

"What've you got?" Steve whispered, standing closer than he really needed to but hey, that was Steve.

"Think about it," Danny began, looking up and taking a step back because…_Steve_. Sheesh, "Personal space, much?"

"I don't want him to overhear," Steve hissed, narrowing his eyes.

Danny rolled his own in response. "Think about it," he started again. "You personally search each and every ship that lands in the one and only approved landing zone."

"Right," Steve nodded.

"And we've got radar up the wazoo combined with what they're doing back in Houston, _plus_ we can also monitor the dark side of this hunk of rock thanks to the six _hours_ you made me spend in a suit _where_ I got Moondust in places you don't even _want_ to know about from while you forced me into putting up those four relay towers," and of course Steve had to make a face of some sort on that one "so in essence there's no way anyone can get here without us knowing about it."

"And?"

"And that means that either our mystery vic was damn good at Hide-n-Seek as a kid or someone's found a way to get onto lunar soil and evade our equipment."

"I can't fault that logic. But what's that got to do with Stan and his construction crews?"

Danny's reply was cut off by one Grace Williams hitting him full-force with a hug that might've felled a man less used to Grace Hugs. Steve grinned when she extracted herself from her father's arms and found his, blushing when she said, "I'm so glad you're here, Uncle Steve."

"Me, too. I still get to see you," he said, squeezing her briefly in return.

"Well, yeah, but I'm mostly glad you're here for my Danno," she whispered, though it wasn't like Danny couldn't hear…he just pretended not to, moving across the room to thank Stan for his time, get a glimpse at the toddler Stanley the Fourth (_poor kid_, he thought) and say his good-byes to Rachel.

"You're glad I'm here for him?" Steve asked, truly seeming surprised. "Well, good. Someone's got to watch his back, after all."

Danny gave him the hairy eyeball from across the way. So of course, Steve had to up the ante.

"I'm glad I'm here for him, too. Can you imagine him clunking around a crappy Moon apartment alone?"

Grace giggled.

Danny glared and declared it was time to leave via airlock now. And if Steve didn't "get a move on" he'd find out whether Super SEALs could breathe Moon No-Air real quick.

"You are such an ass," Danny groused as they waited in Stan's small airlock chamber for the transport's door to signal they could board, but couldn't keep from smiling because _gawd_ his daughter. "And if you put on the Carpent—"

One step ahead of him as he started the mid-sized transport vehicle with six big balloon wheels, Steve had already turned on the mp3 player and all Danny could do was pray for strength because—

_Why do birds suddenly appear  
Every time you are near?  
Just like me, they long to be  
Close to you._

"Okay, finish what you were telling me back there," Steve said nonchalantly as the airlock tube detached and he put the transport in Drive.

"I hate you, Steven. Just so we're clear. So _so_ much."

"No, you don't. And neither does Grace. So spill."

Danny tuned out Karen Friggin' Carpenter's voice and sighed dramatically. "Somehow our vic gets here _completely_ undetected and the first thing he does is tether himself to the railing at Stanley's new offices? There wasn't anything there but structure, not even any equipment's been moved in yet."

"No, you're right, it makes no sense."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, my friend."

Danny twisted in the black puffy-materialed seat to look at his partner. Steve glanced at him once…twice… "What?"

"It makes perfect sense if it has something to do with Stan being the one and only private individual thus far having been granted permission by half the countries in the Moon League to not only purchase, but re-sell lunar land, don't you think?"

"Wait," Steve said, brow furrowing. "You think this was some half-assed attempt at sabotage or something?"

Danny leaned back in the seat, forefinger of his right hand tapping against the inside handle of the transport door. "No, if this was a professional saboteur, or anyone intent on actually doing harm, I think they would've gone directly to Stan and Rachel's home. There wasn't anything they could do with the skeletal office."

"Other than hang a dead body from it," Steve replied. Then his eyes widened. He turned and looked at Danny.

Danny, who looked right back at him and tapped his left index finger against his own temple. "I'll make a detective out of you yet, McGarrett."

"Tsk," Steve replied as the transport bounced along what Steve insisted was a road, and which Danny insisted was no more a road than those damn red dirt things that hugged the edges of cliffs back on Oahu.

Oahu.

Danny looked out the passenger side window. Gray-white. Craters. Rocks. Moondust. Black space all around, as far as the eye could see. The sun bright enough to be blinding if not for the super-tinted windows of the transport and the solid black wall right behind the two front seats that left the back open for criminals or materials, whichever it was needed for.

Even the damn transport was friggin' _white_.

Danny sighed.

"You okay?" Steve asked.

"Sure. I'm always okay. I was okay when I packed up and moved to Hawaii, I'm okay now. Why wouldn't I be okay?" Danny waved his hand around at all the windows. "I mean, it's so _lovely_ here and all."

"You're not getting the Moon Blues already, are you?"

"Already? Four months we've been here and no, I do _not_ get Moon Blues."

"Yes, Danny. Four months _we've_ been here. _We_."

Danny swallowed hard, looked over at Steve, who oh, _God_, was sporting I-Did-It-For-You-Danno Face and…well, what the hell was Danny supposed to do with that, huh? "How do you handle there being no water?"

Steve gave him a lopsided grin. "I wasn't anywhere near water for five years, Danny, not even on my leaves."

"Kinda defeats the purpose of joining the Navy, doesn't it?"

Steve chuckled. "Yeah, kinda. Besides, we're going to get an Olympic-sized pool in six months, Denning's working on the President to get the addition approved."

"That's not the ocean. You can't surf in an Olympic-sized pool."

Steve was quiet for a moment as Karen Carpenter finished her wailing…er…singing.

_That is why all the girls in town  
Follow you all around  
Just like me, they long to be  
Close to you._

"What, no comeback?" Danny asked, to shut the song out of his mind if nothing else.

"I can do without waves for a while if it means we're all still together," Steve said quietly just as the last strains of the song wafted out of the speakers. Then he reached out and turned the mp3 player off. "_Ohana_ doesn't only apply in Hawaii, you know."

"Did I ever thank you?" Danny asked, feeling his throat close up a little.

Okay, a _lot_.

Steve shrugged and gave him that half-smile of his.

Danny cleared his throat. "Thank you."

The half-smile turned into a Thousand-Watt Grin as Steve backed the transport up to one of the five Five-0 building's airlock entrances.

"Goof," Danny growled, turning toward a smallish door in the black wall between them and the back of the transport. Just as he got the door unlatched and started to open it, an alarm blared at them from the front console.

The last thing Danny remembered hearing was "No! Danny, _don't_!"

Well, not _quite_ the last thing.

_So they sprinkled moondust in your hair of gold  
And starlight in your eyes of blue…_

His last thought?

_Now why the hell did he turn _that_ back on…?_


	3. Chapter 3: What the Actual Fuck?

Oh, _God_, did he hurt.

Like, _everywhere_.

Head pounding. Arms feeling like they were being sliced off at the biceps. Legs he couldn't actually feel but pelvis like some cosmic force had it in the mother of all vices.

He wanted to cry out. Wanted to scream his frustration, his pain. Ask what the hell had happened, what the alarm had meant.

_That is why all the girls in town_

Oh, for the love of—

_Follow you all around_

Why, _why_ is that song the backdrop to his misery?

_Just like me they long to be_

"Danno?"

_Close to you_

"Danny!"

Steve didn't sound right.

"Dan—ny!"

Definitely not right.

Danny didn't think he could speak. So instead he forced his eyelids open. Just slits at first, wondering what he'd see. Wondering if he'd see Moonscape in these seconds before the vacuum and lack of atmosphere took his life.

_Oh, Grace. Baby, I'm so sorry._

Just little slits, and light. Light! Way, _way_ too bright light, even for the bright side of the Moon. What the _hell_?

"Dan—!"

Steve. Something's wrong with Steve.

He opened his eyes wider and saw—

_The fuck?_

The _Camaro_? How the hell was he upside-down looking at the blown-out windshield of his _car_?

He felt a hand on his forearm and the sound that ripped from his gut right up through his throat and came tearing out of his mouth sounded inhuman. Pain made him see a blinding white even brighter than the sun.

"So-sorry, Dan…Danny," panted his partner, his best friend.

_Just like me, they long to be_

The blinding white disappeared and Danny dared open his eyes again. A street. The Camaro was upside-down. Asphalt. White and yellow lines. Palm trees. Darker-skinned people with black hair and dark eyes crowding around. Pidgin being spoken.

Hawaii.

How the actual _fuck_ was he in _Hawaii_?

He heard nothing more from the driver's seat. He was afraid to move his head. "Steve," he whispered, sure it was too quiet for anyone to hear with the backdrop of Hawaii and approaching sirens.

_Close to you_

"Be okay, Danno," came from his left.

Danny's eyes slipped closed. At this point he didn't care about anything but not feeling white-hot stakes plunging into his body head to toe.

_Aaah, aa-aa-aa-aahhh  
Close to you_

Of course, Danny thought, that would be the last thing he'd fucking hear.

Damn Steve and his music choices anyway.

_Aaah, aa-aa-aa-aahhh  
Close to you_

* * *

The next time Danny woke he wasn't hurting at _all_.

_Drugs_, his mind supplied. _You are being given some _serious_ drugs, Williams._

After all, what else could explain the fact that he felt like he was floating rather than being speared by Hawaiian _pololus_, right? See? He'd learned something from Mamo's whole ancient Hawaiian culture reenactment thing.

"Danno? You coming back to us?"

Danny groaned. Of _course_ the first voice he would hear would be Steve's. Beat the hell out of Karen Carpenter's, though, he reasoned.

"You're right, Commander McGarrett, it looks like he's coming out of it."

Female. Familiar. Not Kono. Who was that?

"At least his BP's stabilized, and between Max and me, we got the laceration sealed very well. He won't require a transfusion."

Was that woman's voice talking about _him_? Laceration? A single laceration had accounted for all that _agony_ he was feeling last time he woke up?

"Thanks, Malia."

Ah! Malia. Mrs. Chin Ho. Right.

"I'm just glad it wasn't more severe. Max and I aren't ER doctors. You know, we really need to think about getting a more general practitioner up here for things like this."

"Didn't think we'd need it. Now a DB, a stowaway on our transport and this."

Malia sighed. "Unfortunately it just proves that theory that human nature will thrive no matter what the setting. Even on the Moon."

A pause while Danny digested the profound truth of that statement.

"I've got to hook up with a colleague of mine, send her copies of the scans we did on your partner, send her all my notes. Make sure there's not anything I missed."

"I'll keep an eye on him. Thanks again."

"No problem."

Danny heard a door swish open and then close. He finally decided opening his eyes was a good thing when he felt a shadow fall over him. There, front and center, was "Steve."

"Welcome back. You had me worried there for a minute."

A smile of relief. A face Danny wasn't sure he'd ever seen before that required naming. Later. He'd name it later.

God_damn_, his mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton.

Leave it to Steve to read his mind, bringing an ice chip to his lips. Danny sucked it into his mouth, let the cold coat his tongue and teeth, slide down his throat.

Another ice chip. More soothing. "Do you remember what happened?" Steve asked. So much for soothing.

"No," Danny rasped out and received another ice chip for his efforts.

"Someone was stowed away in the back of our transport. They were opening the rear hatch just as you were about to open the cabin door."

Danny's eyes widened as Steve fed him another ice chip. "Who?"

"Don't know. He, uh…well, he slammed the outer hatch closed, yanked the door open and knifed you, right between a couple ribs."

"Ouch," Danny replied succinctly.

"Yeah, I know. Been there, done that."

"Of course you have," Danny whispered, eyes drifting closed.

"We don't know who this man is; his DNA isn't registered in our database any more than the murder victim's was."

"Not talking?"

"He _can't_ talk," Steve replied.

Danny's eyelids popped open. "You didn't."

"He _stabbed_ you, Danny, and then he tried to stab me. I used reasonable force to subdue him."

Danny sighed, felt a sharp jab in his torso as he did so. His breath hitched. "Reasonable force for you, police brutality for most," he managed to get out on the exhale.

Steve snorted. "Better than putting you in a drawer next to John Doe Number One."

"That is true," Danny acquiesced. "Tired."

"Sleep, Danny. Stan's bringing Grace by in a couple of hours once she's done with her satellite classes."

"Wake me?"

"Of course," Steve replied, and Danny felt his partner's hand on his forearm as he slowly drifted away on a cloud of drug-induced sleep.

At least this time, Steve's grip hadn't felt like it was ripping his arm right out of its socket.

* * *

The next time consciousness reared its ugly head Danny thought someone was taking a chainsaw to every extremity he had. He heard himself scream, actually _scream_ as sirens pierced his skull, as hands jostled him, touching everywhere, shoving him, pushing him.

"You're going to be okay, shh, we're stabilizing you, Detective."

Okay? He was hardly _okay_! He hurt like he was Angel in the bathroom scene of _Scarface_ for Christ's sake, what the _hell_? He'd been _fine_ the last time he woke up! He'd only been stabbed in the ribs, what the—?

"We've got to inject something for the pain or he won't stop fighting us long enough to assess his injuries."

"I'll make the call to Kings."

"Detective Williams, you need to stop trying to move."

Move? He wasn't trying to move! He was trying to _die_ here, not _move_!

"Dr. Singh says no-can-do on the painkillers, not with the extent of his injuries. We're six minutes out, Jo, hold him together."

"Easier said than done," was the woman's muttered response to the man's voice.

Danny moaned. It was the best he could do under the circumstances. He wanted to know where Steve had gone. Had Grace already been to see him and something had gone wrong? Where was Malia? What was with these sirens, they didn't have sirens on the Moon!

"Detective Williams, we'll be at the hospital shortly."

Where was Steve, he'd been right there feeding Danny ice chips, telling him to go to sleep! He was right _there_!

"Steve!" he managed to spit out of his mouth, felt wetness cover his lips, his chin, his nose, what the hell was that?

Voices, voices, the one called Jo and the man, words Danny couldn't hear, couldn't decipher, his body screaming way louder now than anyone else might be.

"Your partner, right?"

"Steve!" he got out again, then choked on liquid bubbling up in his throat, why'd it taste like he was sucking on rebar for God's sake?

"I'm sorry, Detective Williams. I'm so sorry."

He went ice cold all over.

Something must have happened after Danny went to sleep, something must have happened in the tiny hospital ward adjacent to Max's autopsy room, and Steve…he…

_No_ was the only word Danny could think now. _No…_

What he wouldn't give to have Karen Carpenter back now.

_Steve…_

He slipped away once more.


	4. Chapter 4: You have to Stop It

As Danny came to again, he was a little afraid to let himself come up all the way, period. After all, he didn't know whether he'd be getting his mouth stuffed full of ice chips and an armful of Monkey, or whether he'd be in a world of hurt choking on his own blood and being told by some EMT named Jo she was sorry when he asked about Steve.

"Danno?"

"Monkeeeey," he whispered, then felt her climb onto the bed.

So. Moonbase it was, then. Not Hawaii.

"Danno, you're okay."

"I am, sweetie, nothing but a little cut." He opened his eyes. The look on her face told him she didn't believe him. This was mirrored, of course, by Mr. I-Have-A-More-Expressive-Face-Than-Danny-Has-Words McGarrett's cross between Liar! Face and I-Get-That-She's-Young-But-Still Face.

Grace just snuggled into him, avoiding the single IV line that was inserted into the back of his left hand.

"Anything new?" he asked his partner.

"We've identified both men," Steve said, quickly glancing down at Grace, then obviously deciding this was okay for her to hear. "You were right, Danny. They were not only with the original crew who designed and built the house, they were two of the five who told Gabbana they wouldn't return for the additions being planned."

"Hey, I know that name," Grace said. "Are you talking about Step-Stan's construction crew?"

Danny nodded, hand petting her head. "Yeah, but don't worry about it."

"Some of those guys weren't very nice."

Danny and Steve raised their right eyebrows simultaneously. "You knew them?" Danny asked.

"Well, not really. But they were working on the Lunar West airlock when we moved up here, and some of them were still inside finishing different things like my bathroom."

Steve seated himself in the chair next to Danny's bed, then hunched forward so he was more eye-level with Grace, still snuggled against her Danno. "What makes you say some of them weren't very nice?"

"The guy who was working on my combination sonic/water shower didn't seem to like Step-Stan or Virg very much. I liked Virg, though, he was real nice to me. He even brought me a big lunar rock that has cool silver stripes all the way through it! He found it when they excavated for the house." Grace paused thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, the day he gave it to me, that guy Bob and four other guys were right there. That's when Bob started saying mean stuff, so I just went to find Mom and Junior."

Steve's and Danny's eyes met. Not a word was spoken, but Danno knew not a single one needed to be.

Stan appeared at the door to the small hospital ward door. "Grace, Dr. Kelly has offered us some cookies she had shipped up from Honolulu Cookie Company. Want some?"

"Oh, yeah! I miss that place! I'll be right back, Danno, and I'll bring you a cookie!"

Danny grinned as he kissed the top of her head. "Thanks. One for Steve, too?"

Steve grinned. Grace smiled as she rolled off the bed. "One for Steve, too," she confirmed, then joined Stan. Stan, who gave Danny a knowing look.

Huh. Maybe Danny shouldn't have been so harsh on the guy. He was not only nice, he was observant.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Steve asked as soon as Stan and Grace were gone and the door had swished shut behind them.

"You're damn right I am. We need to get a look at that rock Gabbana gave to my daughter, and we need to find out if the guy she heard grumbling about Stan and Gabbana is one of our vics."

"We also need to find out where the other three of those five who claim they won't return to the Moon with Gabbana are," Steve said with a nod. "I'll get Kono and Chin on that angle, and I'll head back to the Edwards home to pick up Grace's rock."

"We got anyone who can analyze that?"

"Yep. The Naval Base over in the Kepler region has two officers who are geologists on-staff. I'll give them a call on my way to get Grace's rock."

"When can I get the hell out of this bed, anyway? I feel like a useless lump sitting here."

"You're not a useless lump, Danny. You could be dead right now."

Danny looked up and suddenly remembered…and gasped, eyes widening.

"Danny?"

He reached out and gripped Steve's forearm _tightly_.

"Danny, what is it? You okay?"

Danny could feel his face change. He felt fear claw its way up from his gut like an icy hand intent on ripping him to shreds from the inside out. "Steve," he breathed.

"What? You in pain? _What_?"

"Hawaii."

Steve looked him, cocked his head. "What?"

"We're in the Camaro on a street in Hawaii."

"Danny, we haven't been in the Camaro or in Hawaii, for that matter, for five months now."

Confusion made his brain matter feel like oatmeal as he struggled to fight the vivid memories, recollections, but how could they be? They'd never been upside down in the Camaro. Never been in an accident that severe.

"Danno, you're scaring me here, man, what's going on?"

He took two deep breaths, relaxed his hold on Steve's arm only fractionally, and over the next fifteen minutes proceeded to tell him what he 'remembered' – a term so relative in this case he almost couldn't bring himself to use it.

"I'd wake up," Danny said by way of conclusion, noting the I-Have-No-Clue-What-To-Do-With-This Face Steve was sporting. "And I'd find myself here in this bed with you feeding me ice chips. Then the next time I'd wake up I was smashed all to hell and dying, choking on my blood, in Hawaii."

"And I died."

"Well, come to think of it, I'm not really sure. I couldn't talk, and when I said your name, all Jo said was that she was sorry. I remember thinking you _had_ died, though," Danny finished quietly.

Steve rose to his feet, paced away, ran his hands through his hair and returned to the bedside. "We're not in Hawaii. There is no Camaro or asphalt up here, and I'm not dead."

Danny looked away, feeling like a complete idiot for even having told his partner about stupid dreams.

"But maybe there's something in what you experienced that you're supposed to know," Steve finished. Danny's eyes snapped back to him. "Hey, in Hawaii there are people who interpret dreams and have visions, and I've seen and heard enough to not discount it completely."

"What am I supposed to know, Steven? We're not even _in_ Hawaii, it's not like we're going to get into an accident like that up here."

Steve replied with a one-shoulder shrug.

"It was so _real_," Danny said. "And the thing was, the whole time in the Camaro, that damn Carpenters song you like so much was playing."

Steve made a face. "The one we fight about constantly?"

"Yeah," Danny replied with a scowl. "That one."

A pregnant silence ensued until at last Grace returned with Step-Stan and a handful of cookies. She handed one to Steve, one to Danny and then sat down in the chair to happily munch on her own.

"I'll go ask Stan about the rock," Steve said.

Danny nodded and took a bite of his cookie. He should be happy. He had everything he needed right here: Grace, happy and healthy…a delicious cookie he could tell had coconut in it…his own health…and Steve not dead.

Yet for all the world he couldn't displace the unsettled feeling in his gut that had taken up residence the moment he'd begun telling Steve about the Hawaii car crash dreams.

It just kept telling him something was _not_ right. Only thing was, he couldn't figure out _what_.

* * *

He awoke with a start. The room he was in was pitch black. There were several machines making regular sounds, beeps and bleeps and blips, nearby. He felt detached, as though hovering above himself somehow, yet he knew he was lying in a bed.

Nothing hurt.

Nothing at all.

In fact, he couldn't feel a _thing_.

Danny blinked, trying to see anything in the room…finally thanks to the glow of several monitors next to his bed, eerie blue-tinged shapes began to appear one by one. A hospital table on wheels, the kind they use to feed patients by rolling the bottom of it under the bed, bringing the tray to the patient's sitting-up level.

A standard hospital-issue chair against the opposite wall.

The doorway to the bathroom.

The door to the hall.

The bed he was lying in, metal bars raised on both sides.

He swallowed. His mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls. He lifted his head to get a better look around and—

_Why won't my head move?_

Danny frowned. He tried it again.

Nothing. At _all_.

His heart started beating faster.

"Steve?"

No Steve. No Stan. No Grace.

No Malia.

His eyes frantically looked around from the thirty-degree angle his body was resting at.

_Beep-beep-beep_

_Bleep…bleep…bleep…_

_Bip-boop. Bip-boop. Bip-boop._

The monitors were all hooked up to _him_.

Something around his head, he could feel it on his forehead.

Sensors all leading underneath the off-white blanket covering his body neck to toes.

Toes.

He tried wiggling them.

Nothing.

He swallowed hard.

"Grace?" he called out a little louder.

Suddenly a shadow moved in the corner he hadn't looked at yet. A small girl, too small for his eleven-year old daughter, stepped forward.

Jesus Christ. It _was_ Grace! But she was only…maybe _nine_ at the most?

"Danno?"

Behind her appeared a taller figure.

"Rachel?"

"Danny," she said, tears streaming down her face as she and Grace moved closer to the bed. "You're awake."

"What's going on?" he asked.

Grace burst into tears.

Rachel's increased to the point where she couldn't even keep them wiped off her cheeks.

"What the hell…where am I? Why do you look like you did two years ago?"

"I'll fetch the doctor," Rachel said, and before Danny could ask what the hell was going on, she was quickly out the door.

Leaving Grace behind.

The little girl stole up to the side of the bed until she was right where Danny could look into her eyes without straining to do so. "Grace, honey, what's going on?"

"You were in a bad car accident, Danno," she replied tearfully.

"Where's Steve?"

Her only response was to bury her face in his abdomen and begin all-out _bawling_. Danny could _see_ she was clutching at his belly, that she was shoving her forehead into it. But he couldn't _feel_ it.

"It isn't supposed to happen this way!" she wailed as she raised her head, bloodshot eyes spilling tears so fast they were soaking the blanket. "Danno, it isn't supposed to happen this way!"

Panic. Sheer, unadulterated panic. He felt it seize his gut, brain-freeze his mind. Vision going white. Hands scrabbling to find purchase as he felt like he was falling…falling…yet those hands of his, those oh-so-expressive hands that were always on the move?

Weren't actually moving.

Nothing but his eyelids and his lips were.

"You have to stop it, Danno, you _have_ to!"

"Stop _what_?"

But Grace just looked at him. She reached out and grabbed his unfeeling hand in both of her own. She kissed the back of it. "You can do it, Danno. I know you can."

He heard the unmistakable sound of a flatline.

He heard his baby girl let out a wail of anguish.

After that, he didn't hear anything at all. Not even that damn Carpenters song.


	5. Chapter 5: Oh, Hell No

This time when Detective Sergeant Daniel Williams awoke, it was with a loud gasp like he was breaching the surface of the water after a near-drowning.

"Holy—Danny!"

Bolt upright in bed, heart monitor tattling on the flip-flopping the lump of muscle inside his chest was doing.

"Danny, you okay?"

Head swiveled to look at Chin.

At Malia.

The Moon.

He could move.

He gulped in oxygen. All he could hear in his head was the sound of a flatline.

All he could see overlaying very worried Kelly faces was Grace, large brown eyes full of tears. Wailing when he asked about Steve.

Malia moved forward, held her finger over his wrist.

Chin moved to the opposite side of the bed, placed a hand gently on Danny's forearm.

And Danny could feel both points of touch.

"Where's Steve?" he asked.

"At the Naval base in Kepler. He took Grace's lunar rock there and is sticking around while they analyze it," Chin replied. "Are you all right?"

"Was it a nightmare?" Malia asked before Danny could respond to Chin. When Danny nodded, Malia looked up at her husband, then back down at Danny. "You've been having a lot of them?"

Danny let out a breath, felt his heart rate finally starting to slow down. "Steve told you."

"Not much," Chin said, "but enough. He's worried about you, _brah_. You're reacting like what you got was a lot worse than a knife through the ribs."

"Damn him and his big stupid mouth."

"I know something about dream interpretation," Malia said, drawing a strange look from Danny and a small smile from Chin. Damn if that man didn't have stars filling up his eyes, and not from the Moonscape outside, either.

"Aren't you a medical doctor?" Danny asked skeptically.

Malia nodded. "Yes, but both sides of my family are very mystical. I'm actually descended from several European countries as well as Hawaii, so the things my family practices are a conglomeration of religious and pagan knowledge from a lot of different places."

"Dream interpretation being one?"

She nodded and smiled. "What was this one about, if you don't mind me asking?"

Danny looked up at Chin. It was fucking emasculating to him to be talking about shit like this as though it meant something.

_It isn't supposed to happen this way!_

Danny suddenly forgot about feeling emasculated or anything else. All he could see was Grace so grief-stricken…and then with her right there he himself had…what? Died? Right in front of his _baby_?

Oh, _hell_ no.

And so Danny proceeded to explain to both Chin and Malia what he remembered, everything from noticing that Grace and Rachel looked like they had two years earlier to the fact that each nightmare or dream or whatever always occurred in Hawaii.

"The accident in the Camaro is very significant," Malia said, eyes focused on a faraway point. "Also I think that Carpenters song you keep hearing is significant, and the fact that there's some mystery about whether or not Steve's actually dead, and you being paralyzed, is also paramount to what you're experiencing."

"But why would this dream be recurring as though Danny's living the event linearly?" Chin asked. "First he's in the Camaro after the accident, then in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, then waking up in the hospital to find he's paralyzed. It's not like it's the same dream over and over."

"No, you're right," Danny said. "It's not. It's like…swear to God, Malia, like I'm living two separate lives."

Brow furrowed in concentration, Malia stated quietly, "Maybe you are." She seated herself on the chair next to the bed as Chin and Danny exchanged _Huh?_ looks.

Malia closed her eyes, her hand barely-there on Danny's left arm. "The car accident is significant on two levels. First, dreaming about yourself being in one means you're guilty about something or that you've made a big mistake somewhere recently."

Danny swallowed hard.

"Of course, it could simply be a portent of something to come, but that seems unlikely given that we're not in Hawaii and there's no Camaro here," she continued. "But what's notable here is that you dream of Steve dying. That means something inside you is dead, non-functional. Something that has to do with Steve, something no longer working right."

Danny closed his eyes and leaned back into the pillows behind his head. This was getting damn personal. "Fuck," he whispered. He couldn't even begin to fathom what the hell all this meant.

"It's a wake-up call, Danny," Malia said, opening her eyes and looking right at him as he opened his own. "Something needs to be fixed before it rips you two apart for good."

"He followed me up here, you _all_ did, what could need fixing in that?" Danny groused.

"You might be feeling guilty that we all left Hawaii to come up here just because of you and Grace," Chin proposed.

Danny opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. Well. Talk about hitting the bullseye. He felt his face flush.

"What about the ambulance ride, and being hospitalized and paralyzed?" Chin asked. Bless the man's ability to redirect like nobody's business.

"The best I can link the ambulance to is that you feel that you're being careless about something, in a way that could lead to complications," Malia replied, still looking right at Danny. "The hospital is sort of the same, meaning you need to heal yourself, either your mental or physical self. It could also mean you're afraid of losing control of your body, which would lead us into the paralysis."

Danny just stared at her, having trouble processing everything she was saying, trying to relate it to himself. It just wasn't gelling for him.

"The paralysis is most likely the feeling that you're helpless. That you're in a situation you can't change, something that's out of your control."

"Being here," Danny said without hesitation. "Same as with being in Hawaii."

"That's right," Chin nodded. "It's all about what Stan and Rachel want."

"And I'd say the song's significance is your relationship with Grace. You want to be close to her," Malia concluded, removing her hand from Danny's arm. "Well, I'm no professional on that score, but that's probably all a practicing interpreter would tell you."

Danny flashed her a small smile. "Thanks," he said. Then added, "I think."

Chin's cell phone rang as Malia got to her feet. He pulled it off his belt clip, looked at the screen and said to them, "It's Steve," before answering it. Chin nodded. "Yeah, he's awake. Malia's here, too." Then he tapped his cell phone screen. "You're on speaker."

"I think we've found what those two guys from Gabbana's construction company were after," came Steve's voice through the phone.

"What'd your Navy guys come up with?" Danny asked, sitting fully upright and feeling only the smallest of pinches in his ribcage for doing so.

"Danny. You said Navy."

"Steven!"

Steve chuckled. Malia hid a smile behind her hand and Chin just rolled his eyes as Steve replied, "Gadolinium."

"_Gesundheit_!" Danny quipped. "Now what's in Gracie's lunar rock?"

"Very funny," Steve groused. "That _is_ what's in Gracie's rock. Gadolinium. Once Captain Lacy, one of the two Navy geologists here at the base, identified it, his assistant Googled it and showed me what it looks like on its own. Danny, some of it's such a light silver I never would know it _wasn't_ silver without being told."

"Well, what's this gadolinium used for?" Chin asked. "Is it valuable?"

"And how," Steve replied. "Apparently it's really rare on Earth and it's used in everything from nuclear propulsion systems for things like subs, to treating dialysis patients. If someone were to find a store of it on the Moon and get mining rights, they'd be rich inside a few months."

"Good God, and my baby's sleeping right on top of a store of it?"

"Seems so," Steve replied. "I'm going to get in touch with Virgil Gabbana and make sure exactly where he found this lunar rock."

"Steve," Danny said, frown lines creasing his forehead.

"I know," Steve interrupted. "If the guys from the construction crew are after that stuff, that whole family might be in danger."

Danny looked up at Chin who said, "I'll go get Kono up. She's taking a forced nap."

"Okay," Steve replied. "You and Kono get on with Gabbana, and collate whatever responses we've gotten from the FBI and local Florida agencies on the remaining men in his crew."

"Will do," Chin said.

"Malia?"

"Yes?"

"How's Danny?"

"You can't ask me? I'm right _here_, hello."

He could almost _hear_ Steve smile. "Yes, but I want the truth, partner."

"Oh, that's rich coming from Mr. Knife-Wound?-What-Knife-Wound?"

Steve laughed out loud. Malia grinned. "He's doing much better, physically."

Danny's eyes widened in the ensuing silence. Dammit. He knew exactly what Steve was thinking. Confirmed a few seconds later by "You going to lose your marbles on me, Danno?"

"Yes. For you being an ass. Now get back here and pick me up, we have work to do!"

"On my way."

Steve ended the call.

Chin and Malia said their good-byes.

And Danny worried.

As usual.

All the things Malia had said about what his dreams…more like nightmares…meant. And yet for all any of them knew maybe they _weren't_ dreams. But Danny, well…he wasn't prepared to get quite that tinkly just yet.

He was here on the Moon. Grace was eleven years old. Stanley, Jr. was two. Danny had his own small-ish but adequate room in the Five-0 Moonbase. So did Steve. So did Kono. So did Max. Chin and Malia's was a little larger to accommodate a bigger bed.

A new and supposedly ultra-sexy Chevy called the Crescent was being built and would be delivered to Steve within six weeks' time, at which point Danny fully expected to receive it as a gift that he'd never be allowed to drive.

Things were normal, even though they were living on a big, dead rock in space. They had a couple murders to solve. They had a lead as to why the two men had been on the Moon to begin with, let alone why they'd been killed.

And his baby girl was potentially in danger. All in all, a typical case for Five-0, really, and Danny couldn't help but worry about Grace even when she wasn't possibly involved in a case he was working on.

But what about the damn nightmares? So real, so _very_ real he could still feel the ghost pains when he'd awakened in the overturned Camaro, when he'd been in the ambulance. His heart could still feel the grief over Steve, the fright when he found he couldn't move any part of his body except his eyelids and lips.

And most of all, Grace's child-like belief in him. _You can do it, Danno. I know you can._

But what was he supposed to do? If he was to believe this was something that was going to happen, it made no sense because they weren't in goddamn _Hawaii_!

His thoughts were interrupted by his room door swishing open and Steve looming in the doorway. "I think you dreaming about Hawaii was psychic or something," Steve said.

Danny blinked. "Huh?" he asked rather eloquently.

"The last three men of those five that Gabbana told Stan didn't want to return to the Moon are in Hawaii according to flight records."

"Are you _kidding_ me?"

"Nope," Steve said, shaking his head and walking all the way into the room. "And there's a rare metals and gemstones dealer the FBI's been tracking out of Honolulu for over a year now."

Danny put a hand on his forehead. This could _not_ be happening.

"HPD's distributing photos of the three construction guys and Gabbana's on his way to the Fort Lauderdale airport to catch a flight to Oahu because four more men from original Edwards construction crew have gone missing and he thinks they're there."

"What are you trying to tell me, Steven?"

Steve looked down at him, arms folded over his chest. "Our case just took a left turn at the North Star. We've gotta go back, partner."

Danny stared at him.

Suddenly he didn't know what terrified him more: the dreams he'd been having or the sudden realization that if he and Steve returned to Hawaii, they might actually come true.


	6. Chapter 6: Holy Shit

And that was how Danny, now fourteen days out from having been shanked between the ribs – thankfully only three inches deep – found himself, Steve and the entire Edwards family on the Lunar X6 Moon Shuttle headed for a Lunar Shuttle landing facility on the western edge of the small island of Kaho'olawe, part of the State of Hawaii.

It was how, even as everyone else was pretty excited to be returning home, Danny was so damn worked up he was fairly bursting from several of what he was certain were aneurisms combined with heart attacks, not to mention a few small strokes thrown in for good measure. Oh. And apoplexy. He was _definitely_ apoplectic.

"Danny, don't worry about it," Steve had said to him twice before leaving the Moon and three times since. "They were just nightmares."

Oh, sure. Just nightmares, says the man who didn't see a two-years younger Grace and Rachel. Who didn't feel like every bone in his body had been broken only to find out later he was paralyzed. Who hadn't been hanging upside-down in an overturned Camaro, or having to listen to Grace _sob_.

"You heard Malia, it's just inner stuff trying to work its way out," was Steve's – who was seated next to him in the front row of the shuttle's passenger compartment – next attempt at calming his partner.

But how could Danny be sure? Never in his _life_ had he had dreams, or even nightmares, that were so vivid and real he felt them for days after like he did with this series. Speaking of series, he'd never had any dreams that were sequential in nature like these had been, either.

Finally, as Hawaii started becoming more than just an imagined dot in the midst of an awful lot of blue ocean, Steve looked sidelong at Danny for a minute or so, then said, "Look, we won't drive the Camaro at all, okay? We'll use my truck while we're here."

Danny turned in his seat to find Rachel holding a sleeping Stanley, Jr., Stan reading a book of some sort and Grace lost in games on her iPad. Then he turned back to whisper to Steve, "What if they decide not to return to the Moon? Grace was so happy to be going back to Hawaii, and I think Rachel was, too, even though she tried hiding it."

Steve leaned his head closer, yeah, Mr. No Personal Space. "Danny," he whispered, "are you saying you want us to abandon Moon Five-0 because of them deciding to return to Earth – _if_ that's what they decide?"

Well, shit. Had Danny there. After all, they were doing something new and exciting. They were the _de facto_ law enforcement agency on that stupid hunk of rock, moondust nothwithstanding. Their names would forever be linked with the very beginnings of Moon colonization, and even though Danny well and truly missed Hawaii – as much as it pained him to admit it - he'd started thinking of another idea altogether as he, his partner and the Edwards' had been boarding the shuttle.

"What if we do, like, half a year in Hawaii, half a year on the Moon? You know, train some of the best and brightest from HPD and switch off so we still have Moon Five-0 but also still have Hawaii Five-0?"

Steve's face. It lit up. Like the freaking Christmas tree in Rockefeller Square. Danny fought the urge to facepalm because _no_ self-respecting BAMF SEAL should _ever_ look that much like a stupidly happy adolescent Labrador Retriever.

"I bet Chin, Malia and Kono would like that. Especially Kono. I think she really misses surfing."

"Yeah. I bet she does. I feel like shit, you know, being the cause for it all."

"See?" Steve said with a smile and a pat to Danny's forearm. "Just like Malia interpreted your dreams. Don't feel guilty, _brah_. It was _our_ choice to follow you."

Danny cocked his head at Steve, who was watching the viewscreen mounted on the wall at the front of the compartment as Hawaii became larger and larger. "Why _did_ you follow me?"

Steve didn't reply or so much as twitch. At least, not immediately. Danny began to wonder if this was just going to be one of those things Steve tried to tell him was classified or something. Which Danny would give him ever-loving shit for because unless the U.S. Navy was running some sort of weird secret experiment that the entirety of Five-0, Max and Kamekona and Malia included, were unwitting participants in—

"Holy shit," Danny breathed, eyes widening.

Steve turned to look at him. "We're almost home, Danno."

"Answer my question."

Steve simply stared at him.

"Steven J. McGarrett, you tell me right here and right now why the hell you and the rest of Five-0 followed me to the Moon when I followed Grace. You tell me right _now_!" he screamed as loud as he could while still keeping it a whisper.

"Why wouldn't I follow you, Danny? You're my best friend, and my partner. That'd be like splitting up Ren and Stimpy."

Danny was taken aback. "Ren and Stimpy."

Steve smiled. "Mmhm. What, you think it isn't supposed to happen this way?"

Face draining of all color, Danny felt ice water running through his veins. His jaw hung slack as he _stared_ at his partner. His "what did you say?" came out more like a squeak than anything.

_It isn't supposed to happen this way! Danno, it isn't supposed to happen this way!_

Steve just kept on smiling at him. Then he grasped Danny's left hand between his two, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

Danny stopped breathing.

_She reached out and grabbed his unfeeling hand in both of her own. She kissed the back of it._

Steve's next words were overlaid with the ones he'd heard from Grace's nine-year old mouth in his dream.

"You can do it, Danno. I know you can."  
_You can do it, Danno. I know you can._

Suddenly the Lunar x6 Moon Shuttle seemed to be spiraling wildly out of control. Or was it Danny who was spiraling? He cried out and reached for Steve. He felt his hands grab Steve's arm, but then it was almost as if Steve just turned into a puff of smoke and disappeared right out from under Danny's grip.

"Steve!" he yelled, wondering why, how…how could the shuttle be crashing? Where had Steve gone? "_Grace!_" he hollered at the top of his lungs. "Rachel!"

There was no sound of human voices, only the sound of a loud, very high-pitched whine. He heard the explosion happen, but didn't stay alive long enough to see it.

* * *

He awoke covered in sweat. Every hair on his head was damp. It was rolling down his neck as he sat up in a twin bed he didn't recognize. His white V-neck tee shirt was soaked. His pale blue boxers, equally so. Danny ran a hand through his disgustingly wet hair and took a look around the room.

He wasn't on Five-0's Moonbase.

He wasn't in that crappy apartment he'd had until he'd had to vacate for it to be torn down. Nor in the Hilton. Nor that tiny windowless place he'd called home until black mold had reared its ugly head.

He wasn't in Chin and Malia's spare bedroom where he'd stayed for three weeks during his merry-go-round-the-island trying to find permanent accommodations.

A poster of some late eighties heavy metal group was hanging on the back of the room's door.

It was a bedroom.

Danny took a deep breath. Okay.

A six-shelf bookshelf. Several books. Some tropies with little golden footballs on top of them. A little dusty, but fairly well-kept.

It was dark out, that much he could tell through the room's lone window. A window which was open all the way and letting in a gentle breeze that billowed see-through white curtains around and around in a gentle dance.

Danny blinked and got to his feet. A four-drawer dresser with some framed photos on top of it. Danny moved closer and peered at them in the near-total darkness but couldn't make out who was in them.

Then the door to the room was thrown open. Artificial light from a hallway poured in, temporarily blinding him, sending black spots dancing through his vision. "Hey!" Danny protested, throwing an arm up over his eyes.

"Danny? What the hell happened in here, you look like you took a shower in your underwear."

Pulling his arm from his eyes a tad too soon, Danny gulped and just _stared_. "Steve?"

Steve made a face. "Who were you expecting? Gabby?"

"Gabby?" Danny repeated. Then he looked around again. "What the hell?"

Steve took one tentative step into the room. He was wearing blue plaid lightweight pajama pants and nothing on top. His feet were bare. His hair was sleep-rumpled. "Danny, you screamed my name out, then Grace's and Rachel's. Did you have another nightmare?"

Nope. Danny definitely wasn't breathing. He stumbled backwards and fell onto the bed.

"Jesus Christ, Danny, are you stroking out on me or something?" Steve's normally calm voice was bordering on scared shitless.

Steve crouched next to the bed and tried to pull Danny upright so he was at least sitting. So he could take his pulse, check his eyes, get him to breathing properly.

"Danno, come on, man. Not like this."

Danny felt himself take a giant gulp of air. He blinked as the air saturated his lungs. Looked into Steve's wide, scared eyes. Felt Steve's left hand on his right bicep; the fingers of Steve's right hand against the carotid on the left side of his neck. Reached up and grasped Steve's forearms tight…so tight.

Images came flooding back to him. Pictures of lives it felt like he'd lived as sure as he was sitting here now. Sitting here in…his eyes darted around. Steve's childhood bedroom.

In Steve's house.

In Honolulu.

In Hawaii.

On Earth.

Finally his breaths started coming and going in puffs of air, better than nothing going in and nothing coming out. Steve's eyes never once left his. Danny didn't know what to say. Didn't know _how_ to say it.

_Our first murder on the Moon," Kono mourned._

Danny felt tears fill his eyes. He saw Steve's eyes grow even _more_ concerned.

_Why do birds suddenly appear_

_"You're not getting the Moon Blues already, are you?"_

He'd been…_they_! _They'd_ been on the Moon! They _had_, to follow _Grace_!

_Every time you are near?_

_"Welcome back. You had me worried there for a minute."_

Steve's hands moved along both of Danny's arms until they rested under the palms of Danny's smaller ones. Danny looked down, one lone tear escaping his right eye against his will.

_Just like me, they long to be_

_"I'm sorry, Detective Williams. I'm so sorry."_

"We were on the Moon. And we were here in the Camaro. You died," Danny choked out, looking back up at Steve. "_I_ died."

"What?" Steve whispered, lines deeply furrowing his forehead, eyes never leaving his partner's.

_Close to you._

_"Danno, you're scaring me here, man, what's going on?"_

"I shouldn't be here." Danny looked at Steve's face, every inch of it, couldn't tell what he wanted to know from it. "What year is it?"

"Year?" Steve repeated. Danny nodded. "It's…it's 2012, Danno."

_So they sprinkled moondust in your hair of gold_

_"You were in a bad car accident, Danno."_

"What…" Danny swallowed hard, pulled his hands away from Steve's, wiped the tear track from his face. "What case are we working on?"

Steve leaned back just a fraction. "The one where that construction company Stan hired to build his new offices at the site of the old All-Star Paintball games started having guys show up dead in the channel just off the plot of land Stan's building on. Remember? We interviewed Stan yesterday, and the owner of Tropical Modules is flying here from Ft. Lauderdale on the red-eye as we speak. Virgil Gabbana?"

_And starlight in your eyes of blue…_

_"Yes, but I want the truth, partner."_

Danny closed his eyes. "How do I know this is real?" he asked, voice broken and so quiet Steve barely heard him.

"Danny?" Yeah. Steve sounded scared.

"What am I doing in your old bedroom?"

Steve took a deep breath. "You just crashed here for the night because you were too wiped out to drive back to the little apartment you rented out in Halawa."

Danny nodded once. He looked all around the room as Steve rose to his feet.

"Danny, you've been having nightmares for over two weeks. You just told the team about them a couple days ago, when Malia was visiting HQ and said she could tell you hadn't been sleeping well for a while."

Steve looked at him for a few seconds. "She explained what your dreams meant. Don't you remember?"

Sure, that had happened. But it had happened on the fucking _Moon _– _not_ in the Iolani Palace headquarters in _fucking_ Honolulu! None of this was right, dammit!

Scrubbing a hand down his face, Danny got to his feet a little unsteadily. He keened forward. Steve moved quickly and caught him, eyes boring into Danny's own. "We gotta do something about this, Danny. I need to know you have my back."

_That is why all the girls in town_

Danny pulled away from him. "As soon as I figure out which life I'm supposed to be living, I'll do something about it."

_Follow you all around_

He didn't let Steve's eyes loose once. Steve, who looked like he might be thinking Danny was losing every single marble he was born with right there in front of him.

_Just like me, they long to be_

"But no matter which life it is, Steven, I _always_ have your back."

_Close to you._

He could tell Steve didn't understand, even though he gave a strange, small smile in response. But that was okay. Because Danny? He didn't fucking understand either.


	7. Chapter 7: What Are We, Married?

While Danny showered, Steve brought him the small suitcase Danny kept at his house containing a couple changes of clothing and a few toiletries for cases such as this. As Danny let the hot water cascade over his body, he leaned forward, right hand on the tiled wall in front of him to steady himself.

"Left your stuff in my old room, D," called Steve from the partway open bathroom door.

"Thanks," Danny mumbled, unable to make his voice get any louder.

His world. All his worlds. Whatever they were, whether dream or real or truly other lives, were going to shit. Here it was three-thirty in the morning and he was wide awake and in the shower because this particular reality had him as lost and confused as the dreams of Hawaii had when he'd been so sure he was on the Moon.

Everything here felt real. The tile was cool beneath the palm of his hand. The water was as hot as he could stand it as it poured over him, plastering his hair to his head and the sides of his face before sliding down his neck, shoulders, back, chest, arms, ass, legs. It felt _real_.

When he'd grabbed Steve's arms…when he'd been talking with Steve just now in his old room…he'd been able to _smell_ Steve. That musky sleep-warm scent that was simply his partner had permeated his senses as Steve tried to steady him, ground him, hold him here in this particular reality that could simply be nothing more than yet another figment of Danny's apparently overactive and very fertile imagination.

Yet when he'd been on the Moon it'd felt just as real. He remembered the smell of the coffee when he'd walked into their small bullpen at the Five-0 Moonbase. He remembered the ride in the transport, Steve blasting the Carpenters from his mp3 flash drive. He felt, even now, the arms of his eleven-year old daughter wrapping around him and squeezing tightly.

But the accident in the Camaro had been painfully, horribly real as well. The agony when, upside-down in the car, Steve had reached out and touched his forearm. The blinding white that confronted him in the ambulance, sirens piercing his skull, the voices of Jo and the male medic driving.

Even _not_ feeling anything, as had been the case when he'd awakened in the hospital to find Rachel and Grace there crying, had been tangible. Not being able to tell other than through sight that his little girl was sobbing into his belly, not being able to feel her grasp his hand and kiss the back of it.

Danny shot to a straight-up standing position, eyes wide. He backed out of the spray a bit as the water blasted his face. Grace had kissed the back of his hand.

So had Steve.

_Steve_.

That's not something Steve would do. Ever. Ever ever _ever_. Danny didn't care if the two of them were going undercover as gay lovers somewhere, Steve would _never_ pull something like that out and use it. Not on _Danny_.

His daughter's and his partner's words had been the same, though, with that gesture. There was something Danny was supposed to do. Something he was supposed to stop, or put right. And both of them had said he could do it, that they _knew_ he could.

But what the fuck _was_ it?

Danny balled his hands into fists and pounded one of them on the tiled wall to his right.

This reality he was in now seemed real enough. He remembered renting the little one-bedroom apartment in the complex at the end of Kulawea Street in Halawa that Steve had said he was too tired to drive to last night. He remembered showing it off to Steve three days after moving in, happily reverse-ranting about the fact that there was _no_ black mold, that it had _windows_ and that his neighbors weren't every kind of deadbeat known to man.

He remembered Steve letting him take point on the case that had begun at six yesterday morning wherein the body of a man had been found in the channel not five hundred yards out from the small jut of land that was being leveled for Stan's brand-new fancy office building in Honolulu. The body had been very puffed up and warped from having been in the water for a good two weeks, Max had estimated.

Then as divers searched the channel for any clues as to the body's identity, a second body had turned up, tethered to a metal rung of one of the channel's maintenance ladders just southeast of Stan's land. So they'd gone to Stan's and Rachel's home and asked Stan a bunch of questions and—

Danny swallowed hard. That's _exactly_ what they'd done on the Moon, more or less. Including the fact that the faces were both so distorted they were difficult to identify. One had been tethered to the railing just outside Stan's new offices while the other had been hiding in the back of Steve and Danny's transport, killed by Steve himself after stabbing Danny in the ribs.

They'd gone to Stan's.

And Grace had told them about a rock the head of the construction company had given her. A rock that proved to be laced with an element that was definitely valuable enough to kill for. Could it…could that be similar to this case in the Here and Now? Virgil Gabbana, the damn _name_ was the same, though the company he owned was named slightly differently. And he was on his way here, just as the Gabbana Danny remembered from the Moon was on his way to Hawaii.

He quickly shampooed his hair and scrubbed himself clean with the bar of Bubble Shack Hawaiian Soap company soap Steve had. It smelled like…well, earthy, was the only way he could describe it. At least Steve didn't go for one of those god-awful floral scents or something similarly unmanly.

After toweling himself dry and securing the towel around his waist, he walked the short distance from the bathroom to Steve's childhood bedroom to find his suitcase on the bed waiting for him. He stopped and stared at it, able to recall precisely the day six weeks earlier he'd packed it and thrown it into the trunk of the Camaro, knowing the team was on a case that'd keep them out all hours.

He remembered.

He _remembered_.

Danny pulled the towel off and opened the suitcase.

He also remembered the day Rachel told him she and Stan were taking the kids to the Moon. His disbelief. His surety that she'd been pulling his leg and fixing to break the other one all at the same time.

Walking into the bullpen, gathering his team together and telling them. Two days later, the team telling him they were coming with him, Max and Kamekona and Malia included.

Just like that.

_Your relationship with Grace. You want to be close to her._

And Five-0…they'd followed.

_Why wouldn't I follow you, Danny? You're my best friend, _and_ my partner._

But…to the _Moon_? You didn't follow even your best friend out into space when you had your own life, your own home, your own job! People just didn't _do_ things like that! Danny's own flesh-and-blood relatives hadn't followed him to Hawaii, not even Matt who, before the whole FBI fiasco, he'd been so close to…_he_ hadn't followed Danny.

Best friends and relatives moved away all the time. Yet seven people had followed Daniel Williams to the _Moon_?

_Something inside you is dead, non-functional. Something that has to do with Steve, something no longer working right._

Had Malia been right? Was Danny really and truly belonging here, right where he was in Steve's house, in Steve's old room, working on a murder investigation tied to Stan Edwards, and had only been dreaming about the Moon because something inside him _was_ broken?

The Camaro.

The car accident.

Steve dying.

Danny dying.

Dying without being able to say good-bye.

The Moon.

Steve had followed him _and_ gotten his entire _ohana_ to do the same…all the way to the _Moon_.

Steve opened his house to him, here and now, giving him a place to crash.

_You need to do a better job of picking your friends._

Danny pulled his button-down shirt on and began buttoning it from the third one on down.

_Tell me about it. I picked you, didn't I?_

"Hey," came a soft voice from the bedroom doorway.

Danny turned around just as he finished buttoning the last one on his shirt, then started tucking the shirt into his still-open dress pants. "Hey," he said, without meeting McGarrett's eyes.

"I ran out and got you a cup of Starbucks," Steve said, holding out a large cup of coffee. "Just the way you like it."

Danny zipped and buttoned his pants, moved forward and reached out to take the cup from Steve's hand. "Thanks, man." Then he stopped, cup halfway to his lips, and looked up at his partner. "You went out and got me coffee."

Steve's eyebrows went up. He glanced at the cup then back at Danny. "Yeah?"

Danny turned and set the cup down on top of the dresser, then faced Steve again. "Tell me something." He rubbed a hand along his jawline. "What would you do if I told you Grace was leaving Hawaii? Going somewhere far away and that I had to follow?"

Steve swallowed hard, folded his arms over his chest. "You, uh…trying to tell me that?"

"No. No, no," Danny replied, waving his hands and noting Steve's face moving from…what the hell kind of Face had that been, anyway?...to what he'd definitely categorize as Relieved Face. "I'm just asking, what would you do?"

Steve leaned against the doorframe, trying – and failing – to appear nonchalant. He shrugged his free shoulder. "What _could_ I do? Where Grace goes, you follow, right?"

"Right, but you wouldn't, uh…" Danny scratched at the stubble on his right cheek. "I don't know, you wouldn't think, I don't know, that you could, uh…" His voice trailed off. He felt his cheeks pink up. He flapped a hand at Steve. "Never mind."

Steve's whole look seemed to soften a little. "You asking me if I'd follow? What are we, married?" But it was a question asked with no hint of teasing or disbelief.

"Never mind, come on, let's get to work."

"At four-thirty in the morning, Danny? _You_?"

Danny gave him a nasty look, picked up his coffee and followed his partner down the steps and out of the house.

He was halfway to the passenger side of the Camaro when he froze mid-step, nearly falling flat on his face from lack of balance. "No," he said, staring at the car.

Steve was at the driver's side door already, hand poised to open it. "No?"

Danny shook his head, turned to look at his partner as the very first rays of light began peeking up over the eastern horizon. "We can't be in this car, Steve."

"Your nightmares?"

Danny nodded. His hand held the coffee cup tight…_too_ tight. The edges of it began to cave.

Steve's phone rang. He never took his eyes off Danny as he pulled it out, frowned at the face of it, and thumbed the call open. "McGarrett." He listened, then said, "Yes, Mr. Gabbana, my partner and I can swing by and pick you up outside the terminal." He paused, stared at Danny a few more seconds. "We'll be in a dark blue full-sized pickup."

With that, Steve ended the call, pocketed Danny's keys and pivoted to head for his truck. Danny hurried after him. "You believe me?" he asked, no longer squeezing the cup too tight.

Steve stopped on the other side of the truck's hood. He leaned his elbows on it and looked thoughtfully at Danny. "I honestly don't know. But there's no reason to tempt Fate, is there?" He grinned, winked and got into the driver's seat.

He started the truck just as Danny opened the passenger side door.

_That is why all the girls in town  
Follow you all around_

"Jesus Christ, what _is_ it with you and that goddamn _song_?" Danny groused. "You even played it in our transport on the Moon!" he finished as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"The Moon, Danny?" Steve shifted the truck into Drive as Danny closed the door and buckled his seatbelt. Then it was like a light bulb went on over his head. So brightly Danny almost swore he could see it. "Is _that_ why you asked me what I'd do if you said you had to leave? Did you dream that Grace went to the Moon, you had to follow her and _I_ followed _you_?"

Heat rose from Danny's chest straight up his neck until it flushed his face crimson. Christ, when you put it that way it sounded really fucking stupid. Like they were…lovers or something, rather than work partners and best friends and…oh, _God_, did he feel like a dumbass.

Steve, with that silly little sideways half-smile he often enjoyed pulling out, waited until Danny finally looked him in the eye before morphing the thing into an all-out grin. "Sounds like fun. You let me know when Grace tells you she's moving to the Moon." He took his foot off the brake and hit the gas.

"Sounds like fun, he says. Steven, there is no _air_ on the Moon! There are no _beaches_! There's no _surf_ or _sand_! There's only goddamn Moondust and let me tell you, my friend, that gets into way more places than sand could _ever_ reach."

Steve laughed out loud as he pulled onto Piikoi Street. "You really okay?"

"I don't know," Danny sighed, then took a sip of his coffee and put the cup down in the cup holder. "I'm just really glad we're not in the Camaro right now."

The responding smile from Steve was wiped clean from his face within a handful of seconds…replaced by a look of horror and honest-to-God fear. Danny had just enough time to look forward out the windshield before it struck and he felt the truck spinning out of control.

_Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhh Close to you_

"No!" Danny yelled.

_Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhh Close to you_

But this time he wasn't going down without a goddamn fight. Danny unbuckled his seatbelt, reached across the center console, grabbed the steering wheel with his right hand and Steve's forearm with his left as Steve pumped the brakes.

It worked. Danny's grip helped Steve steady the truck. It stopped.

The flipped gasoline-carrying semi that had sideswiped their front bumper was still twirling on the street and headed directly for the truck.

"Out!" Danny yelled. "_Now!_"

He didn't have time to look and make sure Steve had gotten out. All he could do was fling his door open, jump out and run like a bat out of Hell. He heard the semi hit Steve's truck. He heard and felt the heat of the resulting explosion on his back.

He screeched to a halt in the damp grass on the side of the road, pivoted and saw a giant fireball leap into the air. Then a second explosion. The truck was completely engulfed in flames. Danny ran toward it.

"Steve!"

He skirted around to the left, hoping…praying. There was no sign of his partner.

"No, no, _no_…_Steve!_"


	8. Chapter 8: Happy to See Me?

_Yes, Danny. Four months we've been here._

"Steve!" The heat from the tanker-and-pickup bonfire was stifling. But he couldn't stop looking.

_So-sorry, Dan…Danny._

No. It was _not_ going to go down like this. Danny skirted around the burning pile of metal, rubber and gasoline as close as he could. "_Steven_!"

_You could be dead right now._

There.

_Oh, my God_, Danny thought, hope welling up in his chest.

Movement on the ground, just down the ditch that lined that side of the street.

_It isn't supposed to happen this way!_

"Steve!" Danny hollered.

A dark head popped up. Eyelids blinked. A smile appeared. Strong arms pushed a torso up. Knees planted on the grass. A six-foot tall figure rose to full height.

Danny couldn't contain himself. He hug-barreled into his partner so hard he knocked him right back to the ground again. The two of them rolled three times down the short hill until they landed in the ditch. Steve on his back. Danny lying face-down atop him.

Eyes met eyes.

"Happy to see me?" Steve asked.

Danny wanted to punch him, hug him, maybe even kiss him, for Chrissakes, and how inappropriate was _that_?

"You're alive," was all Danny could get to happen, though. He bowed his head, relief making him shake as his forehead hit Steve's shoulder. "Shit."

"Thanks to you," Steve replied, hiking them both up to a sitting position and then pulling Danny to his feet. "You know, if we'd been in the Camaro the first time that tanker clipped us, it would've flipped us."

Danny's eyes grew wide.

Flipped.

Upside-down.

In the Camaro.

He turned to find a whole host of dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired people gathering around the spectacle that was, slowly, starting to burn a little less hot and a little less bright.

Then sirens.

"I stopped it," Danny whispered.

"Huh?" Steve said, brushing blades of grass, a little sand and some dirt from various places on his shirt and pants.

"We didn't flip upside-down in the Camaro," Danny said, looking up and catching Steve's eyes. "In my nightmares, we did. We both died. That stupid fucking Carpenters song was playing just like it was when the tanker hit us in your truck."

Steve's eyes widened a little. "You told us all about that back at the palace a few days ago. I'd completely forgotten." Steve brushed one more piece of dirt from his bare forearm. "Danny, did you just…change…the future?"

Danny stared at the dancing flames even as an ambulance arrived. Two paramedics hopped out of the front seat, a Caucasian man and a black woman. They ran over to the side of the road and down the small hill to stand in front of Danny and Steve.

"You two all right?" the man asked.

Danny froze. He stared at the man. His voice sounded so _familiar_.

"Name's Alex," he said. "Were you in either one of those vehicles when the collision occurred?"

Four HPD black-and-whites pulled on-scene.

"Yes, we were in the pickup," Steve replied.

"What about the tanker truck, any sign of the driver?" the female medic asked.

Danny's face drained of all color as his eyes went from Alex's face to hers, then traveled down to the brass name tag pinned to her shirt.

JO THOMAS

"Oh, my God," Danny breathed. "Oh, my God, it's you."

Jo gave him a funny look. "Well, if you two are all right, we're going to see if the truck driver made it."

Steve nodded once, then moved to stand directly in front of Danny. "You know her?"

Danny swallowed hard. "They were the medics in the ambulance I was in after the Camaro flipped. That guy, Alex, he called the hospital, talked to a Dr. Singh. Jo was trying to get me to calm down and when I asked about you all she said was—"

The sudden lump in Danny's throat kept him from continuing. Steve reached out, placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Then he jogged up the embankment and onto the road. He scanned the area as Danny joined him, then moved quickly to where he saw Alex standing at the rear doors of the ambulance.

"Excuse me," Steve said as they approached.

"Yes, do you need medical attention?" Alex asked, turning to face them.

"No. But can you tell me, who's your ER contact right now?"

Alex gave Steve a weird look but replied, "Dr. Singh. Why?"

Steve's jaw worked as he looked meaningfully at Danny. "Thank you," was all he said. A couple HPD officers headed their way. "Not a word about your dreams or anything else," he whispered to Danny.

Danny nodded. No way would he say anything. Because the last thing he needed was for the entirety of the Honolulu Police Department to add the label _lolo_ to the overused _haole_ he already got too much of to begin with.

* * *

The partners were silent in the back of Chin's Traverse. Chin kept looking in the rearview mirror at them, but nobody said a word. Kono was just ahead of them in her own car and when they pulled into their reserved parking spaces, everyone got out and entered the palace.

Complete and total silence in the bullpen as they all stood around the computer table.

Then Danny's phone rang to the tune of _Brown-Eyed Girl_. He pulled the phone from his pants pocket and thumbed the line open. "Hi, Monkey. How come you're not in school?"

"I have a cold, Danno, Mom said I could stay home."

"Oh, no, a cold?" Danny asked, mind wandering away from what had happened in his dreams and what had almost happened for real and onto the much more pleasing thought of his little girl. "You need some of Grandma's famous chicken soup?"

"Yes, please. A_choo_!"

"Aw, baby. Okay, I'll have to run to the store and get the ingredients. Is your mom home?"

"No, she had to take Stanley, Jr. for his shots. Nanny Anya is here, though."

"All right, let me see if it'd be all right with your mom if I made the soup up at your place, and I'll be there in about an hour, k?"

"Okay, Danno. Oh! I can show you the cool rock I got!"

Danny's breath hitched.

His teammates noticed, all three of them casting worried looks his way.

"What did you say?" Danny whispered into the phone.

"Remember how I told you Step-Stan's construction crew was here last week looking at the place where he's going to build his new office building?"

Danny nodded, then remembered Grace couldn't see him. "Y-yes, I-I remember."

"Well, Step-Stan forgot until just this morning that the head of the crew, a man he calls Virg, found a really cool rock out there that he thought I might like."

Dizzy, vision fuzzing over, Danny reached out one hand to steady himself on the computer table. "Monkey?"

"Yeah?"

Danny swallowed really, really hard. "Does the rock have silver stripes in it?"

There was a moment of silence. "How did you know that? Did you talk to Step-Stan?" she asked accusingly.

His world started spinning. He felt hands on back, his shoulder. Felt someone come right up behind him front-to-back to support him. "Oh, my God," he breathed, both hands now gripping the tabletop so hard his knuckles were white. "Oh, my God."

"Danny?"

"Hey, _brah_, what's going on?"

"Danno?"

Danny could hear Grace calling out to him from the phone. He felt someone take it. Heard Kono's voice telling Grace not to worry, they'd have her dad and the chicken soup ingredients over to her before she could even blink.

"Danny, Jesus Christ, what is it? What's got silver stripes?" Steve asked. He was the one right behind Danny, and his hands suddenly gripped Danny's shoulders hard. "Danny, _talk_ to us!"

Danny swallowed again, turned and leaned his butt against the table. He looked at Kono's wide, concerned eyes. At Chin's look of curiosity. At Steve's OMG-WTF Face. Then he ran a hand down his own face, fingernails scraping the stubble on his cheeks.

"When I was on the Moon," he began, stopped, took a deep breath. "When I _dreamed_ we were on the Moon, there were two dead bodies."

Chin nodded. "I remember you telling us that when Malia was here."

Danny nodded once. "The way we cracked what was going on, why those men were there to begin with and why they'd been killed was that Virgil Gabbana had given Grace a lunar rock he found while excavating the site for Stan and Rachel's house."

"House?" Kono repeated. "Their house on the Moon?"

Danny nodded again. "He thought it was pretty, that she'd like it because it was filled with silver stripes." Danny held up his hands to get Steve to back off because even _this_ one was Personal Space Challenged, it seemed. Steve did so, but still hovered as close as he dared as Danny continued. "You," he said, gesturing to his partner, "had some Navy geologist analyze the stuff. You found out it was…"

His voice trailed off.

He bit his lip.

"It started with a g," he finally said.

"What was it, a gem of some sort?" Kono asked as she and Chin pulled up internet browsers on the computer table.

"A mineral?" Chin asked.

"G—" Danny faltered.

Steve's hand found his forearm. "You can do it, Danny. I know you can."

"Shit," Danny breathed. "I wish you'd stop saying things you've said to me before."

Steve gave him Say-What? Face, let go of him and took a step back.

Danny's eyes focused on a point that seemed far away as everyone watched and waited expectantly. Dammit, he _knew_ this, he _knew_ the name of the goddamn mineral! He just had to _remember_!

The double glass doors opened. Kono, Chin and Steve looked up to find a chestnut-haired man who stood about six-foot-one dressed in jeans and white button-down shirt thrown on over a white undershirt headed their way.

"The HPD officers you sent to get me said I could come right in," he said, approaching Steve and holding out his hand. "I'm Virgil Gabbana."

"Gado_lin_ium!" Danny exclaimed, making every single person in the room jump. "That's what it was! Gadolinium!"

"What the hell's that?" Steve asked even as Chin and Kono began typing furiously on the computer table.

"It's a really rare metal used for…um…nuclear subs, I think? Kidney dialysis?"

Chin looked up at him with wide eyes. "He's right. It's _very_ rare, and China's been waffling back and forth for years about exporting it or not exporting it. Right now they've got a ban on exports so the U.S. is desperately trying to find another source of it."

"What are you talking about?" Virgil asked.

"The rock you gave my daughter," Danny said, seeming to notice the man for the first time. "The one with silver stripes."

"Yeah," Virg nodded. "I found it out on the land Edwards is having us build on. I'm thinking when we start digging out for the foundation there's going to be a layer of it we'll hit."

"That's it!" Danny said, snapping his fingers together. "It's the same thing as what happened on the Moon!"

Virgil looked at Steve with a Is-He-Looney? look on his face.

"Were there five guys from your regular crew who refused to come here and work on Stan's office building?" Danny asked, pointing a finger at Gabbana.

"Uh…well…yes. Yes, there were. I'm working at replacing them now, but there are five more that I suddenly can't reach. Like they've disappeared off the face of the Earth."

"That's it, Steve! Somehow someone figured out what that was in Gracie's rock, and they're trying to get their hands on it, trying to get rich off it. That means Stan, Rachel, Grace and the baby are in danger! Whoever it is has already killed those two men and I'll _bet_ they're two of the five who said they wouldn't come back here!"

Thirty seconds passed while his teammates processed this information. Then suddenly Kono was on the phone to HPD to get guys out to the worksite, Chin was on _another_ line to HPD putting a big detail on the Edwards house, Danny was on the phone to Rachel and Steve was on the phone to Stan.

Virgil Gabbana stood there looking at each and every Five-0 member as though they all belonged in straitjackets.

But Danny didn't give a flying fuck. Because he'd already saved his and Steve's life by keeping them out of the Camaro. And if he was right, he was going to do it again, _plus_ save the entire Edwards family, by getting the jump on whoever the murderer of the two construction men was.

As he told Nanny Anya that HPD officers would soon be arriving to guard her and Grace (and the housekeeper, whom Anya reminded him was there, too), all he could see in his mind was the Lunar X6 rocket's passenger compartment.

Steve kissing the back of his hand.

Telling him he could do it.

The rocket spiraling out of control.

And then exploding.

Well, there may not be any friggin' lunar shuttles here and now, but Steve, Grace, the Edwards' and his team _were_ there, and if the Moon dreams had also been portents of things to come, Danny was going to do his level best to see he nipped that one in the bud just as he had the Camaro dreams.

He caught a look on Steve's face, though, as both men hung up their phones. "What is it?" he asked as Chin and Kono each ended their own calls.

"Stan's admin doesn't know where he is," Steve said. "She's been trying to get hold of him for over an hour. He didn't show up for his first morning meeting and his cell phone's turned off."

"Oh, no," Danny breathed.

They raced out of the palace, Virgil Gabbana hot on their tails demanding to know what the hell was going on.

Nobody answered him, but all five of them piled into Chin's and Kono's vehicles. Sirens blared and lights flashed as the cousins took off, once more barking orders and questions into their phones. Virg was in Kono's passenger seat. Steve was in Chin's, while Danny was in the back right behind his partner.

Steve turned to look at Danny. "What happens to Stan? Does he get killed?"

Danny shook his head, then shrugged helplessly. "In my dreams, we _all_ die, you, me, Grace, Rachel, Stan, the baby. We all die on the shuttle on the way back to Hawaii."

"The shuttle. What, like a space shuttle?"

"Lunar shuttle," Danny corrected. "Heading for…" His eyes grew big and round. "Koho'olawe!"

"What? The little island that hasn't got more than fifty Hawaiians living on it?" Steve asked incredulously. "Are you _sure_?"

"Yes," Danny nodded and nodded and nodded. "Yes, that's it!"

"So," Chin said, looking at Danny in the rearview mirror, then at Steve across the front seat. "Do we need a boat?"

"Helicopter," Steve corrected, righting himself in the seat. "I'll have Kono continue on to the construction site, but we need to get to Koho'olawe fast."

"Really?" Danny asked from the back.

Steve turned to look at him again. "Danny, everything else in your dreams has been significant. Since Stan's missing, and since Koho'alawe is where your lunar shuttle was heading before it blew up, I'd bet money that what we're looking for is on that island. Maybe even _Stan_."

Danny didn't know whether to feel gratitude toward his partner for believing in him, or question whether Steve was as insane as Danny felt he himself was.

He just hoped that Stan really _was_ on that island. And that they were in time to save him. Because after all, he really _was_ a nice guy.


	9. Chapter 9: Moondust and Epilogue

The Makani Kai helicopter was waiting, blades already whirling, by the time Chin got to their spot at the Honolulu International Airport. Danny was fine with the whole Steve-piloting-a-helicopter thing because after all, they'd gone after his sister Mary Ann in a helicopter and survived. Steve could do anything.

Pretty much.

He guessed.

It wasn't until the Traverse screeched to a stop…until Steve, Chin and Danny were out of the vehicle and running full-tilt toward the chopper with Steve's friend who owned Makani Kai waiting to speak briefly to him…until Steve was bent close to the man so he could hear what he was saying…that Danny's world suddenly felt like it was falling apart all over again.

_Suddenly the Lunar x6 Moon Shuttle seemed to be spiraling wildly out of control._

He stopped so fast on the tarmac that he nearly tripped over his own feet.

_Or was it Danny who was spiraling?_

The whirling blades mesmerized him. _Chop-choppa-chop-choppa_ they said, rhythmic and soothing…speaking, maybe.

_He cried out and reached for Steve._

Danny felt his chest heave, felt himself begin to hyperventilate.

_He felt his hands grab Steve's arm…_

He swayed, eyes growing big and round. _Chop-choppa-chop-choppa._

…_then it was almost as if Steve just turned into a puff of smoke and disappeared right out from under Danny's grip._

"Oh, God, it's the helicopter!" he gasped, only then realizing both Chin and Steve were already on board. "No."

"Danny!" Steve yelled through the open pilot-side door. "Come on!" He gestured with his left arm even as he put on the headset.

_There was no sound of human voices, only the sound of a loud, very high-pitched whine._

A high-pitched whine came out of Danny's wide-open mouth. He felt the sweltering hot tarmac scrape mercilessly against his bare forearms as he dropped hard to the ground.

"_Danny_!"

He could hear his cell phone ringing.

_Why do birds suddenly appear  
Every time you are near?_

_Chop-choppa-chop-choppa-chop-choppa-don't-do-it-don't-do-it-don't-do-it…_

"Danny, are you okay?"

_He heard the explosion happen…_

He looked up, struggling to catch his breath.

"_Steve!"_  
"Steve!"

Steve's wide eyes were right in front of him, hands gripping Danny's biceps, shaking him a little. "Danny, what is it?"

"Chin…"

Steve turned around to look at the helicopter. Looked back at Danny's ashen face. "Holy shit!" He hopped to his feet. "Chin! Chin get out of there _now_! _Chin_!"

High-pitched whine from the helicopter.  
_…only the sound of a loud, very high-pitched whine…_

_Just like me, they long to be  
Close to you._

"Chin!"

Danny heard the explosion.

He squeezed his eyes closed, tears leaking out of them, even as Steve ran toward the burning mass, narrowly avoiding a blade whipping off and piercing the wall of a nearby hangar.

"Here! I'm here!"

Danny's eyes popped open. The sound of sirens, hollering voices, the charred helicopter burning out of control…it all faded into a background buzz as Danny watched Chin Ho run toward Steve, then the two of them turn and begin running toward him.

_Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah Close to you_

Chin and Steve were on their knees next to Danny quick as lightning. "You just saved Chin's life," Steve said, panting from exertion and adrenaline as he placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "You saved _all_ our lives, Danny."

Danny took a few deep breaths. "Maybe that's all," he replied. "Maybe it's finally over."

Steve winked at him. "Told you you could do it, partner."

"What?"

Steve looked at him. "What what?"

"You just said—"

Steve held his hands up in mock defense. "I said nothing."

"But you—"

"Danny, what, I didn't say anything!"

Steve looked perplexed.

"He didn't, _brah_," Chin confirmed.

Danny _felt_ perplexed. What the…?

"Oh, God, Stan! What about Stan, what if he's on that island?" Danny asked, completely forgetting what he was sure Steve said that Steve had…hadn't…whatever.

"If that ring tone's any indication, Kono's trying to call you," Chin said with a nod at the pants pocket Danny's phone was hidden in. "Probably about something to do with one of them."

"_Close to You_ by the Carpenters?" Steve asked, voice rising a notch. "You _hate_ it when I play that song!"

Danny looked up at him. "That's 'cause you're not a five-foot-nine gorgeous kick-ass woman," he said with a smile.

Chin laughed heartily as Danny pulled his phone out, thumbed the line open and listened to Kono's words.

Stan was safe.

Rachel and Stan, Jr. were safe.

Grace, the nanny and the Edwards housekeeper were all safe.

And Virgil Gabbana, well…Kono claimed she wasn't sure how it was he got knocked unconscious, but it might've had something to do with him pulling a gun on her as she drove and threatening to shoot her if she didn't take him to the site where his team was secretly digging up all the gadolinium.

"Kono," Danny said as Steve pulled him to his feet, "you are a goddess and I will forever love you."

Her laugh in his ear made him smile so wide he could feel his eyes crinkling at the corners. "That means drinks are on you tonight, my man," she said.

"You've got yourself a deal…after I've gone and made my daughter some chicken soup," Danny replied.

"Can I help?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. "The whole team can. I don't think Stan and Rachel will mind us keeping their kitchen occupied."

"Doubt it," Kono agreed. "Especially once they find out what we've just finished doing." Danny was just about to end the call when Kono's voice came through again. "Oh, and Danny?"

"Yeah?" he said, putting the phone back to his ear.

"Change my ringtone or next time we go surfing I'll purposely drop in and wipe you the fuck out."

Suitably chastised, Danny nodded. "I'll get right on that."

But he wouldn't. Because the Aneurism+WTF+That's-MY-Goddamn-Song Face Steve was giving him was worth Kono getting in his way on the next wave he caught and making him go down nice and hard.

Steve scowled all the way back to headquarters.

Actually, he scowled the entire time they were there, too, getting the full story out of Virg Gabbana. Which was, of course, all about him and his construction crew absconding with the gadolinium, selling it to the dealer in Honolulu and disappearing to somewhere on Earth where they couldn't be found to live out the rest of their lives with more money than they'd ever be able to spend.

On Earth.

Danny sighed as he, Steve, Chin and Kono headed out of the palace. "What's the matter now?" Steve asked.

"I kind of miss the Moon," Danny lamented.

His teammates gave him a funny look.

"Edwards house in ninety minutes?" Chin asked, checking his watch as he tossed Steve the keys to his Traverse.

"Yeah, I've got to get cleaned up and we need to hit the grocery store to pick up chicken soup ingredients," Danny replied.

"We?" Steve repeated. "Why do _I_ have to go to the grocery store with you?"

"You've got the car, Steven. What are you going to do, wait in it while I go in?"

"Well," Steve said, pouting as he got into the driver's seat, "yes."

Danny rolled his eyes.

Chin shook his head and Kono laughed as the cousins pulled away.

Then Danny's cell phone rang.

_Why do birds suddenly appear?_

Steve looked sidelong at him.

Danny pulled out the phone, thumbed the call open, and tried to say hello. But he didn't even get a squeak out when Kono's voice came through so loud even Steve could hear it as they pulled out of the palace's parking lot.

"I will _drop_ you!" she menaced.

Danny very quickly changed the ringtone.

And sighed. Because maybe he _would_ miss the Moon.

A little.

Everything except the Moondust, anyway.

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

They had just walked in the front door of Steve's house, where Danny had one clean change of clothes left and intended to use them.

"You going to be okay driving your car home later on tonight?" Steve asked as he headed for the staircase.

"What?"

"The Camaro. Because if you're not, you know…you're welcome to crash here again."

Danny smiled up at him, waved the suggestion away. "We've got a full day of paperwork and interviews and straightening this whole damn thing out tomorrow," he replied. "I'll need another clean set of clothes and everything, you know."

Steve nodded and started up the stairs. He stopped and turned. "Did we really live on the Moon?"

He remembered the tiny room's twin bed…the built-into-the-wall dresser…the smaller version of their bullpen. He remembered every detail of the transport and the stupid flash drive with Steve's mp3 god-awful music on it. The overly plush couch at Stan and Rachel's place. Steve telling him they had to go back to Hawaii. Eating one of the cookies Malia had had shipped all the way there from Honolulu.

"Naw," he huffed with a shake of his head and yet another dismissive wave in Steve's direction. "It was just dreams, man."

"You're gonna be okay, though."

"So long as you, partner o' mine, promise to never kiss the back of my hand."

Steve made a face that had Danny laughing out loud. Now _that_ was one he'd have to name and _soon_.

"I won't play that song anymore if it bothers you so much," Steve offered.

"I kind of like it," Danny replied. _It reminds me of us on the Moon…_

Steve shrugged and disappeared up the steps.

Danny reached into his pants pocket to pull out his phone. When it emerged in his hand, he saw something on his fingertips that made him frown and look at them closely.

_Real_ closely.

They were covered in something white. No, more gray-white.

"What the—?"

He put the phone down on the table next to Steve's front door and reached back into that same pocket. There was something soft and powdery in the bottom of it. He scooped it up and pulled his hand back out, raising it so it was eye-level.

"Oh, my God," he breathed.

Because no freaking _way_ could it be…

"Moondust."

* * *

**SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION ALERT!**

It's coming out MAY 7TH at midnight, everyone - that's _this_ Tuesday! What am I talking about? The second book in my "Takers" series...my original novels about a _new_ kind of vampire! "Takers II: Family" will be hitting Amazon and Smashwords MONDAY MAY 7TH by midnight, so if you haven't checked out the first book yet, search either of those sites for Takers Chris Davis and download the first one to catch up before the second one hits the e-stores! You can also find out more on my blog about my original fiction and screenplays at authorcdavis DOT com.

Thank you for reading my _Hawaii Five-0_ fanfic!


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